Southern California -- this just in

Sorting out the facts in Obama-Joker 'socialist' posters around L.A.

August 3, 2009 | 4:39
pm

Los Angeles residents voted for Barack Obama is large numbers last November (69% compared to 29% for John McCain). So it's somewhat surprising that a controversy over a public critique of the president would start on the streets of L.A.

But that's what happened today. Details are sketchy, but there is apparently at least one street poster in L.A. showing the president as the "Joker" character with white face, red lipstick with the word "socialist" under it.

There has been a lot of commentary on the poster but little detail about where it is and who put it up.

According to KTLA News, Los Angeles Urban Policy Roundtable President Earl Ofari Hutchinson is calling the depiction politically mean-spirited and dangerous. Hutchinson is challenging the group to come forward.

American Thinker claims the posters "are spreading across" the city and has a photo of one on a freeway onramp. Says the site: "It is starting. Open mockery of Barack Obama, as disillusionment sets in with the man, his policies, and the phony image of a race-healing, brilliant, scholarly, middle-of-the-roader."

Bloggers found that first reports of the poster in L.A. surfaced in April -- so it's unclear why it became such a Web sensation today.